Mr. Rogers visits Koko

Koko loved watching Mr. Rogers on TV and was happy to see him in person. (Via The Sound of Young America)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Mojave

It really does not get any more wonderful than this. Thanks for the vid!
Anonymous

I still can’t figure out why republicans hate Mr. Rogers.
Axx

I remember that episode! I had been interested in Koko ever since.

Thanks to whoever dug this one up. (Mark?)
nanuq

Visiting famous primates can be dangerous. Washoe, the signing chimpanzee, once freaked out and mangled the hand of eminent neurologist, Karl Pribram. The injury ended his surgery career.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  If he’s a neurologist and he’s doing surgery, that would be a big problem. Now if he were a neurosurgeon…
6502programmer

So, did Koko ask to see Mr. Rogers’ moobs?
mdh

talking is a human construct, that does not mean ape’s have nothing analagous.
Junglemonkey

I started crying the minute Mr. Rogers said “How lovely!” in response to Koko’s greeting. I can only aspire to his kind of acceptance and love.
jathomas

My favorite part is “Later that day…”

And we come back to her cradling the small looking Fred Rogers in her lap. I couldn’t stop smiling at how cute that was.

I kept wanting to see the title come up “Still later…” only to cut to them taking a nap together.
Anonymous

later that evening…. was expecting to see koko atop the empire state building swatting away bi planes and clutching Mr Rogers in the other hand.
mdh

“is that a flower?”
Architexas

Anyone interested in simian language experiments should read “Nim Chimpsky: the Chimp Who Would be Human.” It’s fascinating, but also heartbreaking. From the looks of things, at least Koko’s educators seem to have taken better care of her than Nim’s did…

I want to say BB did an article about this book, but I can’t remember exactly.

And for those of you who thinks apes can’t use language just because the language was imparted to them by humans: how the hell did you learn to talk? Unless your name is Mowgli and you were raised by wolves…
Anonymous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape_language#Criticisms_of_primate_language_research

Not that it isn’t a lovely clip, and great apes are fascinating. But please, enough of the language-myth.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Anonymous,
  
  You just referenced the only section of the Wikipedia article on ape language that doesn’t cite any references. I believe that you are exhibiting rudimentary selection bias. Or possibly hitting keys in rote sequence in order to earn a banana.
Anonymous

I so fucking love Mister Rogers. He’s a man I wish I was more like.
apoxia

hmmm, I didn’t grow up with Mr Rogers (not on TV here in NZ), therefore I have no sentimental attachment. He looked kinda scared to me, I know I would have been.
Roast Beef

Koko + Mr. Rogers = the best thing that’s happened to me today. Thank you.

Once we were all preverbal primates who initially learned to use language through rote imitation.
mofembot

What a lovely man Fred Rogers was â€” authentic on-camera and off. My older kids got to meet him at an art show once. He talked to them in the same slow, careful way he always spoke on his show, saying to them, “I guess it must seem strange to see me not on TV.” He was completely engaged and “in the moment” with them.

When we were in the process of moving to France, my youngest wrote him a letter about her concerns, and he sent her a beautiful, thoughtful, personal letter empathizing with her fears and offering good advice and encouragement.

The world was a better place while he was in it.
pinehead

Did you catch that about the cuff links? Mr. Rogers was rather advanced in age at the time, but he said his grandfather gave him those cuff links. It seems like a small detail, but it hints at his personality. He was a good man. If there is something like a Heaven, then I hope he’s there. Him and Jim Henson.

I would enjoy meeting Koko, too. But she’s so much bigger and stronger than a human, and I’d be worried that I would offend her in some ignorant way and end up getting my head crushed.
FreakCitySF

My mom worked at the SF zoo and helped raise Koko before Penny adopted her. I’ve tried emailing the gorilla foundation at http://www.koko.org but they don’t ever have public visits. So unless you’re a celeb you ain’t seeing Koko. They are located in Woodside, California, not to far from the Tank museum tour Todd Lapin did a week ago. I would love to surprise my mom with a visit with Koko, we can bring pictures of baby Koko, I need boingboing’s star power ;) If Jesse James of Monster Garage can visit Koko, Xeni/Lapin can surely do this :), I don’t want to have to undress though, that’s a bit of a sore spot as it happened recently.
Anonymous

@17

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panbanisha

Things have moved quite a bit further since the days of ASL experiments.
Anonymous

My parents didn’t want us watching Mr. Rogers, as I recall. At the time I imagined it was some kind of judgment about what was a positive influence on the kids, since grown-ups often made such judgments that made no obvious sense to me.

Now I think they just didn’t like the show. Like, it wasn’t entertaining to them, the way e.g. Sesame Street was. Kinda like Barney I guess. They didn’t like Disney cartoons either, now I know why. Bugs Bunny rules.
CraigGNoble

Fred Rogers. I can’t think of any other better reason to be human.
mdh

language is a human construct, that does not mean ape’s have nothing analogous.
Anonymous

Two people I love: Fred and Koko.
Darren Garrison

But did she grab his balls?

http://startrekspace.blogspot.com/2009/01/koko-and-bill-make-special-connection.html
Jack Daniel

I wanna meet the guy who decided that carpet bombing that clip with synth rock was a good idea.
wylkyn

I’ve wanted to meet Koko since I was a kid. I know many people think that her signing is just a trained response, but she has shown evidence of creative uses of signs beyond that expectation. Things like creating words for things that she doesn’t yet know the sign for (“face hat” for a mask), naming her kitten, describing a dream that woke her up crying (alligators behind my eyes) and so on. This could be all imagined or created by the lead researcher (I forget her name…Penny?), but that seems more of a stretch to me than the idea that another ape could have similar language ability.

I did a speech on Koko for my college speech course back in the 80s. I only got a B because the teacher said that my visual aid, a friend in a gorilla costume, distracted from the material being presented. :)
ricket

Anonymous #17 is right. You can all keep on wishing that Koko “talks”, but the linguists know better.